I welded together some of Vickie's clothes in Raydream then brought it back into poser and made it conformable. Problem is I can't get the texture map to fit right. I've tried many different things with Poser and UV Mapper but I just can't figure this one out. It seems to have shrunk and is twisted. Any ideas?

The hard part is conforming it - so you did well there. If you have a cr2 file for the clothing, and the cr2 file refers to a wavefront.obj file in the Geometries folder, then UVMapper should work, starting with the default planar z-axis settings IIRC. You have to tweak it by separating and moving the groups around, and possibly remapping and enlarging some of them, but Steve Cox has made that fairly painless, especially in the Windows version. Then you create the new texture template, if necessary pasting pieces of the old texture(s) onto it to fit.

As relates to your procedure, RDS stomps all over materials, as you know. You can keep them, if, before you take the item into RDS, you change all 'usemtl' to 'g'. You must, of course then open each item as a single group in order to get at it. When you save the final mesh, you then reconvert the proper 'g' back to 'usemtl' - you may have to add back some real g group lines - if you have two g __ lines in sequence, the first one may have been removed of save.
But about your main problem - you can delete edge verts - no problems - you can internal weld verts - mapping distortions - BUT . edge weld verts -to other groups - mesh with different mapping - bad news.
What you should try - rather than weld, superimpose. select the two verts that you would weld and type in an identical location for both.
It is weld that is causing the problem.
There will be JP split seams maybe, and it may take some patching.

Oh, and I do not know what causes it or what will trigger it, but sometimes, RDS will flip normals. This can be really difficult to fix? but, there is somthing about Poser not wanting normals to begin with? It will do its own? DAZ wants 'vn' lines removed from obj files?
I have not experimented, but maybe Poser itself will put messed up normals right.

I have been ranting about this for nearly 3 years. Poser does not want normals. Poser does not like normals. Poser creates its own normals in RAM. If you leave in normals the chances are high you will have holes in your mesh. There are no normals in Zygote/Daz models, and they have been making the included models for Poser since at least P3. You can remove the vn lines in a text editor, or, far more quickly - automatically - with the Masher in CR2Edit. Daz requested the batch processing feature for this tool because they deal with many many files in a day. Doing this also reduces the file size by 15 - 30%. Dan http://www.zenwareonline.com/cr2edit/cr2edit.html Sorry Win only for software http://www.zenwareonline.com for ZenPaint, ZenTile, ZenGrid and VueMaster

Wow, I didn't think it would be so complicated :) Thank you for all the advice. I will try all the things mentioned here and I will definitly look into the CR2Edit program. Seems as though maybe Raydream isn't the right choice for projects like this. Maybe I'll have to forget about getting my car painted and look into getting Max or something :) Thanx again.

The weld problem is a UV mapping factor, not RDS. The main draw back with RDS MFM is that it ignores usemtl information. This problem is not a reason for jumping to MAX. At the very least, as long as you do not weld verts that should be left separate, you can take the mesh back into UVMapper and reassign materials - Just leave the mapping alone and use layers, or shift and resize if you are determined to get everything on the same map. MFM does not change mapping, just erases material assignments. The normals issue is a challenge, but as Dan as affirmed, Poser will do this anyway, so what RDS does is moot, if you do it right. Thanks Dan, I have not seen this definatively expressed before.

Since I've already played with the .obj file so much now will I have to redo the whole process of importing the pieces into poser and make it conformable? Is it best to do the mapping process before you bring the file into Poser? Excuse my ignorance on this as this is the first time I've tried to do this. Seems like a lot of work for something I won't be able to sell or even give away, although it is good practice for future projects. And yah, I would rather get my car painted :)

Try ... Creating a new texture map instead of modifying the old one in UV Mapper - use the z axis planar option or another if that is not suitable . The Joker suit is incredibly good - especially for a first - and would do well in a Comic Book package .

Yes, I really like the way it turned out and I would like to make it usable. I have a few images in mind for her.I took a break from it because it was giving me a headache but I'll try your suggestion to see if that works. If not I'll have to try and model the catsuit part myself. Couldn't be that hard ...(yah right) I tried removing the vn lines, didn't work and I didn't see any g lines. I found remapping other products easy but since I've put 3 together it's a lot harder. I'm determined though and I will figure it out. I admire those of you who can model the clothing themselves (Anton comes to mind). Thank you for all your suggestions and thanks for the compliment pragask.

There are two ways to determine the orientation of a facet - using it's precalculated vertex normals or looking at it's winding order. Normals are useful if you plan on importing your models into anything other than Poser. Having normals included with the model won't change the way Poser interprets it but it does save space if you remove them. If you're using UVMapper, you already have a way of removing normals - simply uncheck the "export normals" option when exporting the model. I wouldn't simply remove the vn lines using a text editor since they will still be referenced in the facet data. RayDream does do some strange things to models - especially if you're using the boolean function. It tends to get confused and reverses the winding order of some facets causing Poser to think they're facing the other way (althouth I don't think that's what's happening here.) Char - if you'd like me to have a pass at mapping the obj, please feel free to send along the obj file (I promise not to use it for anything other than mapping it for you.) If not, no problem - just thought I'd offer =) Steve stevecox@optonline.net

CR2Edit does save a backup of the original when mashing, in case there is more work to be done in the modeler. I had skipped taking the normal refs out of the f lines for fear of the performance hit in processing, since Poser doesn't care if they are there. But I just tried putting in code for that and the hit is minimal, so the next update will include this, meaning the files will be yet smaller. With the growing size of Poser files and the attendant problems with rendering them, it seems important that anything not needed should be chopped out. The whole winding order thing is a puzzle to me, I read over the info on it and still can't grasp how this gets figured, I'm glad there is UVMapper so that I don't have to deal with it! regards, Dan http://www.zenwareonline.com/cr2edit/cr2edit.html Sorry Win only for software http://www.zenwareonline.com for ZenPaint, ZenTile, ZenGrid and VueMaster

O.K. guys, you sound like you know what your talking about, but poor Jim has no idea exactly what is ment by "normals" Are there two types? If Poser doesn't use normal information how come I can build stuff that is "inside-out", I'm sore you know what I mean - I thought normals controled this? If I recall correctly, I have the "export normals" box unchecked in Habaware, but if I flip the polygons in Max it does fix the inside-out items. I also notice that Max and Poser treat the inside out part differently - if you mirror a mesh Max likes it but Poser treats it as inside out, unless you flip it, which makes Poser happy but now Max thinks it is inside out. The only way I know to fix this is flip it outside Max and bring it back in as a OBJ or just attach it back to what it was mirrored from, which makes both programs happy. Incidently, I just looked, none of my stuff seems to have vn lines, just v, vt and f, so is the second type of nomal the one in the f lines?